The Blog

Royal Watch Fetishes

I was looking through some sites and found that some royalty seem to have been bitten by the watch collecting bug, as a lot of us have.

When it comes to royalty wearing watches, out the gate, we have to tip our hats to the folks at Breguet .

Their watches have been worn by such significant individuals as Queen Victoria and Marie Antoinette who both happened to owned quite a few Breguet timepieces. While Marie Antoinette seemed to stick to Breguet, Queen Victoria wasn’t a one house girl. She is also known to have flirted with the house of Patek Phillipe from time to time. Napoleon, like Marie Antoinette, loved Breguet and traveled with at least 3 when he was on his Egyptian campaign.

For the newshounds of today, you will probably notice that Omega has been in the news lately. Last year, Prince William was spotted wearing an Omega Seamaster. His mother the late Princess Diana wore a ladies Cartier watch, which I read is one of Prince William’s prize possessions.

When it comes to watches, there defiantly isn’t a preferred watch house for the house of Windsor. The Queen owns at least one watch from Vacheron & Constantin and her son Prince Charles has also been know to wear Chopard . Partly responsible might be that Chopard created a namesake watch for Prince Charles called the “Prince of Wales” watch with the benefits going to the Prince’s charity called the Prince’s Trust.

As we move south and go back into history, King Chulalongkorn of Thailand was a huge fan of Vasheron and ordered several pieces just before the turn of the 20th century.

Recently At a charity auction for tsunami victims an Omega Speedmaster was auctioned off. This watch was special because it was signed by Michael Shumacher, the famous American car racer. Who was the the lucky winner and how much did he spend?

The watch was won by none other then the Crown Prince of Quatar. How much did he spend on his new timepiece? 1.5 million dollars. That had to be the worlds most expensive Speedmaster….

By the way, if you know of a royal who is a watch junkie, write in and let me know. I love to see the contributions.